fell because he wasn’t who I wanted. Of how only one face came to mind when he did.
Arthur. Always Arthur.
“It was expected of me.” I slid the ring off. My finger felt light without it. I hated myself for thinking it, but it felt like a burden falling away. I held the four-carat diamond ring in my hand, the stone projecting spears of light from the lamp beside me onto the bed linen. “My father … he wouldn’t have allowed me to refuse.”
I blinked back the tears and the residual ache I felt in my chest at the fact that my father hadn’t ever really cared about my happiness. He’d needed the marriage to happen for Hugo to have rights to the business as my father’s heir. So that society would see us as a worthy match. He’d wanted all his ducks in a neat little row.
“Did you love him?” Vera asked. I looked up at her, shocked at the direct question coming from someone I didn’t know. “Hugo. Did you love him? And don’t lie. I can’t fucking stand liars.”
It felt like a betrayal to the newly dead, but I eventually shook my head and whispered, “Not like that, no.” I laughed without mirth. “But I think he loved me, if that matters.” I sighed. “I’d been with him for years. And it’s not like I had anyone else clamouring for my hand.”
“You sure about that?” Ronnie asked.
I frowned. “More than.”
“Do you love Arthur?” Betsy asked, just as directly as Vera. I whipped my head to her and felt the blood drain from my face. I shook my head, but unlike the truth that fought to escape when I was asked if I loved Hugo, the lie about not loving Arthur was less forthcoming.
A triumphant smile spread across Betsy’s mouth. She turned back to Vera and Ronnie, and an unspoken conversation was shared between them. “He doesn’t love me,” I eventually said, breaking their odd silent communication. That got their attention. “What does it matter if I love him if it isn’t reciprocated?” I straightened my shoulders and gathered all the fight I had left inside me. “I was his fuck buddy for five years, that’s all. He would fuck me and leave me. He wouldn’t let me into his life, tell me anything about it.” I laughed, and even to me it sounded bitter. “I was the posh bit of pussy he shagged because he could. Love didn’t even enter the equation for him.”
“You’re fucking blind,” Vera said.
I glared at her. “How so?”
She shook her head, laughing to herself.
“I said how am I fucking blind?” I snapped, no longer caring if she was part of the firm and could shoot me where I lay. What the hell did I have left to lose?
“Oh, hello. There she bloody is.” Vera looked at Ronnie, eyebrow raised. “What did Vinnie say? She had a thin line of darkness around her too? Looks like we’ve just tapped into it.”
Betsy got up from the chair and sat on the bed bedside me. “Cheska Harlow-Wright. What my sister-in-arms here is trying to tell you is that Arthur, my dear cousin, is hook, line and sinker obsessed with you. And that you, the”—she made air quotes—“‘posh bit of pussy’ he shagged are the only one in Arthur’s entire life who has managed to stir something inside him. The only person who has made his concrete heart crack enough to let in any kind of light.”
My breath was held even though my heart pounded like a fist. I couldn’t take in what Betsy was saying. She had to be lying … but why would she lie? “Cheska, if you think my cousin doesn’t love you—obsessively, possessively, and somewhat wickedly …” She smirked. “Then you’re not as smart as your many degrees from Oxford would have us believe.”
“He left me,” I argued, something like fight igniting inside of me, eradicating the numbness that had blanketed me for the past couple of days. “That night, after …” I looked at the three women around me and realised that it was their fathers who would have died that night. “When you lost your fathers. After that night, he left me. Coldly. Brutally. I never heard from him again. He tossed me aside like scraps.”
Vera laughed again. The patronising sound grated on my nerves. “He came to you. In Oxford. We lost all our family’s leaders, our fathers. His father went into a coma, our gaffer, the head of our